Alice took a few steps back and glanced at him over her shoulder. Her gaze went straight to his wings. “So damned sexy,” she muttered before turning on the Council. “If you have no rights over werewolves, if your laws are meaningless to them...” She leaned forward, glaring. “Then why the fuck do you think any of your laws apply to a dragon and its mate?”
The room erupted into shouts and the Council members began dividing—those who agreed with Alice against those who didn’t. Not that it mattered to Bast. She was right. He was a dragon and he accepted what that meant. The Council was no longer a part of his life. The woman standing at his side was and forever would be.
He turned toward the doorway, finding Antaeus standing before it. The executioner dipped his head in silent agreement. He mouthed, well matched, and Bast almost grinned at him in reply. Antaeus turned the knob and stepped away from the door as it swung away. Freedom to be found beyond the threshold.
Taking the cue, Bast waited for Alice to lead them out. Anyone who dared stand in her way would find him or herself quickly confronted by a possessive dragon. When she didn’t move though, he tilted his head over his shoulder, trying to capture her attention. “Alice?” he said gently.
No response.
Bast glided to her front, ignoring the way the Council members scrambled to get out of his way. He accidentally brushed against one of them, who shrieked as his wing made contact. His heart was pounding too hard for Bast to care. “Alice!”
Horrified, he watched as her muscles began to contract. Over and over again. The tonic-clonic seizure took her from rigid stiffness to violent activity within seconds.
“No!” he screamed.
Too late.
He’d been too fucking late.
Chapter Thirty-One
Pain rippled down Bast’s back as he went to her, wrapping his arms around her. “No...no...”
Tears filled his eyes, flooding his cheeks until he could scarcely see as he lowered their bodies to the floor. He tried so hard, so incredibly hard to make her stop shaking. To get her body to stop its frantic movement. “Please, Alice. Don’t do this.” He looked up. Searched the room for someone—anyone—to help him. To help her. “Don’t do this to me now.”
He’d only just found her. Their time together too short. Too damned short.
He wanted eternity. Demanded it. If this seizure took her from him...the thought was too horrible to even complete.
Had he been too selfish by turning her into a vampire? He’d thought that with the ability to create Jasmine Gerulaitis, the crazy universe—the one that had hated him all this time, the one that made him a pariah among the only family he’d ever known—he’d thought just maybe it had figured he’d deserved a break. That they deserved a chance at love, no matter how flawed they were. He had so much and he’d give it all away. Every penny of it. Just please God, please, give him back this woman.
Turning her on the side, he tried to focus past the tears and fear. Her last seizure hadn’t lasted more than a couple of minutes, although every second felt like an eternity. Protect her from injury. That’s all he had to do. When she awoke, she would be fine. No matter what the doctor had said. She would be fine because she had to be.
Arm beneath her head, he leaned closer. “You’re going to be fine, Alice. Are you listening to me?” He slammed his eyes shut, cleared the tears still flowing and tried again. “I love you and you will not leave me. Not now. Not ever. We have a very long life together ahead of us, and I won’t do it without you. I won’t.”
“Kent.”
His head snapped up, teeth bared as he growled at Councilman Sage. Bast called on his dragon, the one that came to him now as easily as blinking, and a ripple of scales raced down his arm again. The hand nearest to Sage stretched into a claw with lethal nails meant for shredding his enemy to pieces. And right now, Sage was enemy.
The older vampire took a step back. “I only wanted to ask if you needed anything. To help.”
“Why?” rumbled from his throat.
“This isn’t over, but the Council is divided. I predict that most likely she was right.” His gaze went to Alice. To his surprise, Bast noted genuine concern there. “You’re not truly vampire and therefore, not under our laws. You are a dragon...a rare species that we cannot afford to have against us. We hold no dominion over you, unless you choose to live as one of the vampire nation, which we of course cannot allow you to do.”